 The Virginian-Pilot | Virginia Beach soldier killed in Iraq WTKR Your NewsChannel 3 ... was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. PFC Alvaro R. Regalado Sessarego, age 37, of Virginia Beach, Virginia died May 30 at Brooke Army Medical Center, ... Va. Beach family mourns soldier fatally burned in Iraq fireThe Virginian-Pilot Soldier from Va. Beach dies after being injured in IraqWVEC.com (subscription) VB soldier dies from Iraq injuriesWAVY-TV New York Times -WSLS.com all 8 news articles » |
Google Home Page: Now Featuring Your Pictures – Search Engine Land (blog)
Google Home Page: Now Featuring Your Pictures Search Engine Land (blog) In a blog post today, Google announced anyone can upload a picture that will be shown on the Google home page. You'll only see your own picture, ... |
Intermitant low power
I have a Mustang Cobra that I have installed a supercharger on. I have had the car dyno tested. It produced 330hp at the wheels. That seemed to be a little low but the car did exhibit a large gain of power over what it was before. Since then, it will run as it did when I first put on the blower. Som
10 Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions
From Top Cultured:
This list is morbidly interesting. Here's a brief list of 10 inventors killed by their own inventions. Do you know of any more...?
Read the whole article
Are the Valves of the US and Japan made F23A1 engine interchangeable?
The F 23A1 engine installed in the 1998-2002 Accord LX, EX and SE models was manufactured in both Japan and the US. The heads, valve guides and valve keepers were identical. However, the Honda lists different (and much more expensive) intake and exhaust valves for the Japan made engine than the US m
Followup: Rep. Ralph Hall’s unbelievable statement on science funding bill | Bad Astronomy
Hey, remember Congressman Ralph Hall (R-TX) who inserted a totally non sequitur amendment into a science research and education funding bill in a blatant partisan ploy to derail the bill and make Democrats look bad? And remember how the Democrats tried to compromise, removing almost $40 billion of the funding from the bill, but Republicans still stonewalled?
After the Democrats managed to pass the bill despite this, guess what the honorable Ralph Hall had to say. Go on. Guess.
Did you guess this?
"I am disappointed that my Democratic colleagues resorted to using a procedural tactic to defeat Republican changes that would have saved over $40 billion and restored the original COMPETES priority of basic research," science committee ranking member Ralph Hall said in a press release after the vote.
Oh, Representative Hall. It wasn’t enough for you to accuse the Democrats of blatant and transparent partisan parliamentary tactics when they were responding to your very own blatant and transparent partisan parliamentary tactics, was it? So you went ahead and blamed them for not saving the $40 billion that they offered to cut to make you happy in the first place. Instead of taking that compromise, you slammed the door in their face.
Oh, that wacky, wacky Representative Hall. Hyperpartisan hypocritical hackery doesn’t look good on anyone, sir. I sometimes think the Emperor would be better off just coming out and saying he’s naked, rather than trying to sell us on his new clothes.
Oil Spill Update: A Saw Gets Stuck; Will Oil Be Leaking at Christmas? | 80beats
Here’s what’s new in the Gulf of Mexico:
1. Saw stuck.
When we left the BP oil spill yesterday, the “top kill” had failed and the “top cap” plan—cutting the pipe at a strategic location and then placing a containment dome on top—was commencing. But like every other BP attempt to stop the leak, the dome effort hit a snag.
The attempt bogged down overnight as a special diamond-wire saw snagged in the pipe. The work has stalled as BP tries two old logger tricks: changing the angle of the pipe to let the saw get through and, if that doesn’t work, bringing the saw to the surface to replace the blade [Christian Science Monitor].
What’s more, even if the saw gets free and BP successfully cuts the riser, the already-gushing flow of oil will increase by at least 20 percent between the time engineers finish the cut and the time they install the cap. Whether BP can install the cap, or instead a looser-fitting shell that would capture less of the oil, depends on how smoothly the company makes the final cut. Getting the saw stuck isn’t a good sign.
2. Criminal investigation.
The word is official now: Attorney General Eric Holder says the United States government will be opening a criminal investigation into the spill.
The attorney general said there was a range of possible violations under a number of statutes, including the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and the Endangered Species Act. He said charges could include everything ranging from “false statements” to “the way in which certain entities conducted themselves.” Mr. Holder said his department had instructed all relevant parties to preserve documents. “If we find evidence of illegal behavior we will be extremely forceful in our response,” he said, adding that “we have what we think is a sufficient basis for us to have begun a criminal investigation” [Wall Street Journal].
3. Dreaming of a crude Christmas?
Through all the failures by BP to plug the well, there’s always been the hope in the background that even if nothing works, the relief wells will be completed in August and finally put an end to this toxic mess. But like everything else happening at a depth of 5,000 feet, even this is no guarantee.
It took Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, nine months to plug its Ixtoc I well after an explosion and fire in 1979. The company’s first attempt with a relief well failed, so it had to drill a second. Eventually, more than 140 million gallons of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico — the biggest offshore oil spill on record [Bloomberg].
BP is drilling two wells simultaneously as an insurance policy. But energy expert Dan Pickering told Bloomberg that if something went wrong and delayed those operations, he could envisions a scenario in which oil still leaks at Christmastime. Of course, the actual worst-case would be if no one ever successfully stops the leak, in which case it could continue for more than a decade.
4. New wells will go on.
And yet, offshore drilling will continue. We need our gas, we need our plastic. The AP reports today that the federal government has approved the first new shallow water well since President Obama lifted the drilling ban there last week. The moratorium on deep water drilling continues.
Previous posts on the BP oil spill:
80beats: With “Top Kill” a Failure, BP Goes Back to the Containment Dome Plan
80beats: This Hurricane Season Looks Rough, And What If One Hits the Oil Spill?
80beats: We Did the Math: BP Oil Spill Is Now Worse Than the Exxon Valdez
80beats: “Top Kill” Operation Is Under Way in Attempt to Stop Gulf Oil Leak
80beats: Scientists Say Gulf Spill Is Way Worse Than Estimated. How’d We Get It So Wrong?
Image: BP
DARPA Wants To Look into the Future to Prevent Outbreaks Before They Happen
From Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now:
The fight against pathogens is usually reactionary; a pathogen evolves or mutates, developing a drug resistance or finding a more efficient path toward infection, and researchers scramble to shift tactics for figh
Barber Chair Hydraulics Restoration – Antique 1920s Emil J. Paidar
I have seen a few threads on this board about restoring barber chairs. I have even seen some discussing the hydraulics. However, nothing seems to help me with my dilemma.
I am disassembling the chair - 1) to make break it into manageable pieces to haul up a few flights of stairs and 2) to r
how to calculate line amps to kw 3phase 380 volt
sir, our machine 380 volt 3 phase 60 hz ,line ampere 12 amps . how to calculate total ampere?
nuts
ca you tell me how to make nuts or how many processes which the nuts were maken. thanks you
make nuts
can you tell me how to make nuts or say other way that how many processes we need to operate for making nuts?
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Alloy 20 shaft-stress relieve
Hi all,
Is it a normal practice to do stress relieving on Alloy 20 (ASTM B475 UNS N08020 ) shafts? The shaft application is for larg rotating equipment like pumps.
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Vote for the 3 Quarks Daily Science prize | Not Exactly Rocket Science
The nominations for this year’s 3 Quarks Daily Science prize are in and voting is now open. I’ve got quite a few entires in there, so a hearty thank you to everyone who nominated one.
The way it works now is that voting will continue for a week and the top 20 will go through to a semi-final, where the 3QD crew will select their top six. Richard Dawkins will pick the first, second and third prize winners.
Obviously, if you’d like to cast your votes for one of my entries, I’d really appreciate it. There are six to choose from and my personal favourite is the Japanese gut bacteria one, but it’s entirely your call.
Cheers,
Ed
Did Dining on Seafood Help Early Humans Grow These Big Brains? | 80beats
Your brain is hungry. That big gray calculating machine in your head is an energy hog that needs lots of calories—more than the diet of fruits and plants that our distant hominin ancestors probably ate could provide. It’s a mystery, then, just how human ancestors like Homo erectus—who were around when our craniums started to expand in a hurry—ate enough to start growing big brains. But buried in Kenya, a two-million-year-old hint has emerged: Those hominins started eating seafood way back then, archaeologists say.
Near a place called Lake Turkana, archaeologists David Braun found two intriguing groups of items: The bones of fish, turtles, and even crocodiles with the scars of stone tools still showing, and stone fragments that Braun says come from the simple tools these hominins used to carve up the marine animals. He and his colleagues report the find of our ancestors’ ancient feast in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Today, their leftovers—in the form of hundreds of bones and several thousand stone tools—are the earliest “definitive evidence” of hominins butchering and eating aquatic animals, which are rich in fatty acids essential for growing bigger brains [ScienceNOW].
If the hominins of this time dined on the bounty of the sea, Braun says, they could have ingested the calories and fatty acids needed for accelerated brain growth without resorting to scavenging for animal remains, which would have brought our small ancestors in competition with large and fierce predators.
Braun thinks river and lake floodplains of the sort that preserved his fossils gave early hominids a low-risk hunting opportunity. “As lakes and rivers flooded and receded, animals could have been caught. The remains could be easily collected,” he said. Humanity’s ancestors “could have entered the higher trophic level without taking on the risks” [Wired.com].
If Braun is correct, then this was a stroke of good fortune in humanity’s history. The hominins who would have lived at that time and place didn’t have the cognitive wherewithal to get organized and hunt, but since floodwaters left fish at their feet, they didn’t need to.
And the Kenya site itself is remarkable in archaeological terms. From thousands of bones, the team was able to reconstruct at least 10 individual animals that the early humans killed and carved up at the site. Says Braun:
“At sites of this age we often consider ourselves lucky if we find any bone associated with stone tools, but here we found everything from small bird bones to hippopotamus leg bones” [Times of India].
Related Content:
DISCOVER: Cooking Ourselves
DISCOVER: What Does Science Say You Should Eat?
Gene Expression: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, review
80beats: Homo Erectus Women Had Big-Brained Babies, New Fossil Suggests
Image: David Braun
Two upcoming spacecraft encounters | Bad Astronomy
We humans have been busy lately… there are a lot of spacecraft buzzing around the solar system. Sure, you’ve heard of Cassini, and the Mars probes, but there are two very interesting spacecraft making two very interesting encounters in the next few weeks.
1) On June 27, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft — which sent a chunk of copper smashing into a comet back in 2005, and which has now been repurposed for planetary science — will swing by the Earth, using our planet’s gravity to change its direction and speed. DI will pass at a distance of just 37,000 km (23,000 miles)! That’s around the same height above the surface as geosynchronous (i.e. weather and communication) satellites. This maneuver will send the little spacecraft on its way to an encounter with the comet Hartley 2 in November.
2) The European Space Agency’s amazing Rosetta spacecraft will fly by the asteroid 21 Lutetia on July 10. The asteroid is about 95 km across (60 miles), and the flyby distance will be about 3200 km (2000 miles). That’s pretty close, certainly near enough to provide some nice images of the rock. In 2008, Rosetta passed the smaller asteroid 2867 Steins and returned nice images, and in 2009 swung by the Earth, sending back an image so heart-achingly beautiful I chose it as one of my Top Ten images of the year.
Rosetta’s primary mission is taking it to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will drop an actual honest-to-FSM lander on the comet’s surface! This is a tremendously exciting mission, and I can’t wait to see what new wonders it will send us.
Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Emily Lakdawalla for the Rosetta news.
Threading 4130 and 410 ss together.
I have recently threaded a 4130 plug with acme threads into a 410 ss box adapter. now they will not come apart. No extraordinary force was applied and red grease and never-seize was applied to the threads. Why will they not come apart?
Chemist, Biologist Wins MIT Inventor's Prize
From msnbc.com: Science:
A University of California chemistry and biology professor whose research is applied widely in biotechnology became on Wednesday the first woman to win the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize for outstanding inventor. Carolyn Bertozzi, 43, won the $500,000 pr
ELECTRICALS
Dear Sir, Q-1 What is Meaning of CURRENT , VOLTAGE , Resistance ,Capacitance ,Inductance ??? Q-2 . Why Use Prefer DRIVES Instead of Star Delta, DOL, Autotranformer Start
STEAM TABLES FOR SUPER CRITICAL and ULTRA SUPER CRITICAL PRESSURE STEAM
Where can I find steam Table for SUPER CRITICAL STEAM Pressure and ULTA SUPER CRITICAL Steam in Thermal Plants. I have used google but it does not give required data. CR4 MEMBERS CAN SUGGEST THE LINKS.
Where can I have some operational data of Boilers such as Thermal Efficiency, Feed water Temp